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The Action Congress
(AC) has said the plan by the Osun State Government to organise fresh
local government elections would be illegal since the last council
polls have remained nullified by the courts.

In a statement
issued by spokesperson, Lai Mohammed, the party said the government,
led by Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, has blatantly ignored the Court of
Appeal’s ruling. The court had declared that the last council polls in
the state were illegal because they were conducted without following
regulations, and ruled that the election’s results should not stand.
However, the party said the governor has yet to comply with the
judgement, even though his government’s appeal for a stay of execution
was turned down by the court 18 months ago. “A major threat to our
democracy today is the rising, flagrant disregard for the rule of law,”
stated the party. “This is a recipe for anarchy. If the foundation of
democracy is the rule of law, then we must absolutely obey court
rulings.”

Profiting from illegality

The party said a
major reason the last council polls in the state were declared illegal
was because the government failed to give the prescribed 150 days
notice before the elections were held. It accused the governor’s plan
to give a 150-day notice for the fresh council elections, which it
plans to conduct before the end of its tenure, as a charade.

“We say no to this, because it amounts to profiting from a crass
disobedience of the court,” said the party. “The governor cannot and
must not benefit from being in perpetual contempt of court. It will
send a wrong signal to others like him who willfully disobey court
rulings.” The party subsequently asked the governor to dissolve the
councils in accordance with the court’s ruling. “Anything else would
amount to continuing to make a mockery of the legal system.”

Following increased
kidnappings and crime rate in the country, the federal government has
decided to acquire 90 Peugeot 407 vehicles to assist in combating
crime, the minister of information, Dora Akunyili said yesterday.

She said the
project will be funded from the budgetary provision of N79.20 billion
earmarked for the reform programme in the 2010 budget.

This is coming even
as the federal government announced plans to have 36,518 members of the
police shipped out to training schools.

Briefing
journalists after the 23rd session of the weekly federal executive
council meeting which was chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan and
vice president, Namadi Sambo with almost all the ministers in
attendance, the minister of state for information,

Labaran Maku and Mrs Akunyili said the project will gulp a total of N581.5million.

Minister of Police
Affairs, Adamu Waziri, speaking during the meeting which lasted for
about two hours, tendered a memo before council for the award of
contract for the procurement of the vehicles.

“Another memo by
the minister of police affairs got council’s approval for the award of
contract for the procurement of 90 nos Peugeot 407 executive extra for
the Nigeria Police Force, in favour of messrs Peugeot Automobile
Nigeria (PAN) limited, in the total sum of N581,

805,000.00,” Mr
Maku said. “The commitment of the present administration to reposition
the Nigeria Police Force in order for it to perform its constitutional
duties and the need to fast track the implementation of the Reform
Programme of the Nigeria Police Force cannot be over emphasized”.

Mr Maku also stated
that FEC also approved the training of members of the police force as,
without regular training, most police are unable to perform their
duties adequately.

“Efforts are being made to upgrade the capacity of the police through regular training,

which have been
neglected. Currently, 45 courses for different grades for various
levels of police officers have been approved and this year, about
36,518 members of the force will be trained, most of this will go to
the regular police colleges and a few abroad,” he said.

Construction in FCT

Speaking on the
other approvals by Federal Executive Council, Mrs Akunyili said the
minister of the Federal Capital Territory presented a memo to Council
seeking approval for the award of contract for the construction of
Karshi-Ara Road in the FCT. The road is one of the major roads linking
Nasarawa State to the South Eastern part of the FCT. Ara is an
agricultural town in Nasarawa State.

“The Construction
of Karshi-Ara Road will enhance transportation of much needed
agricultural produce to into the FCT and also ease the transportation
of workers in the FCT who reside in Karshi and the neighbouring towns
of Nasarawa State,” she said.

She also noted that
provision of engineering infrastructure to Karshi Town is already
ongoing and attracting many settlers thereby contributing to the
decongestion of the FCT.

She also told
journalist that there is a provision of N2billion in the 2010 statutory
budget of the FCT for construction of the Karshi-Ara Road.

“After considering
the economic benefits of the project, Council approved the award of
contract for the construction of Karshi-Ara Road in the FCT, Abuja, in
favour of Messrs Mangrovetech (Nig) Ltd., in the sum of N4.097bn” the
minister added.

The completion period for the project is 20 months.

The FEC also
approved the ratification of the second revision of the Cotonou
Partnership Agreement which was brought by the minister of planning, Shamsudeen Usman.

The new Agreement, Mrs Akunyili said “will facilitate EU support to climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.

This agreement will commit the EU to re-define the millennium Development Goals”.

The federal government said it has set
up 80 Rural Information Technology Centres (RITCs) across the six
geo-political zones of the country and has deployed the services of a
private Information Technology (IT) firm to manage them.

Wahab Jimoh, director of information
and communications technology at the Ministry of Science and
Technology, made the announcement at an event launching the
government’s partnership at Mambilla Barracks in Abuja on Wednesday.

Mr. Jimoh, who represented the
minister, Mohammed Abubakar, disclosed that the government, through the
National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), had signed
a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a local IT firm, ChamAccess,
to outsource management of the centres to them.

Mr. Jimoh implored the management of
ChamsAccess to diligently implement the terms of its partnership so
that the model could become a framework for managing other RITCs across
the country.

Two-way partnership

Cleopas Angaye, the director general of
NITDA, said the company would be required to provide facilities and
capabilities to effectively manage six mobile internet units and 80
RITCs for the next four years.

“They are also to advise NITDA on the
business development capabilities of subsequent beneficiaries, which
may still be handed over to them based on [their] management of the
sites that are being handed over to them today,” said Mr. Angaye.

He noted that the scheme was an attempt at providing all Nigerians with access, especially in rural areas, to ICT facilities.

Nigerian combatants
who helped end the bloody years of Liberian civil war between 1989 and
1996 left behind peace, and about 250,000 children, a senior Foreign
Affairs official said yesterday.

The Director
General of the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa, Sule
Bassi, told the House of Representatives Diaspora committee yesterday
that Nigerian soldiers, who almost single-handedly restored peace to
the West African nation, had affairs with the local women which
produced the large number of children. Thousands of Nigerian soldiers,
under the ECOWAS monitoring group force (ECOMOG), deployed to the
nation in the nineties after violent clashes broke out between
government forces and a rebel group led by a former president, Charles
Taylor. The conflict is said to have claimed more than 200,000 lives,
and displaced millions more. Mr. Taylor has been accused of war crimes
during the period and is standing trial at the International Criminal
Court. But the our forces did not only fight. According to Mr Bassi,
they also engaged in dalliances with the locals and the children
produced are in hundreds of thousands, with majority of them left back
in the country.

“Many of the kids
have undergone registration and naturalization as Liberians, having
waited for years without seeing their fathers,” he said. “The mothers
are trying to make sure they are properly documented as Liberian and so
on.” Many of the mothers too, according to him, have been undaunted in
locating the fathers to the children and are said to be continuing with
the search. He however assured that although his agency is only
concerned with the issues of experts and professionals in the Diaspora,
the Nigerian embassy in Liberia is offering the matter attention and
has made effort to assist with the situation. “Definitely, you can’t
run away from your our people there are our people; they are still
young and they need schooling and they will also need to be nurtured
just like every other Nigerian,” he said.

Expulsion from Gabon

The House committee
on Diaspora, headed by Abike Dabiri-Erewa, said its members will visit
the country on a “fact finding mission.” Meanwhile, the Nigerian
community in Gabon say they face expulsion threats by the Gabonese
authorities who have allegedly warned that legal and illegal Nigerian
residents will be forced out of the country in response to rising
migration to the oil-rich nation. Over 210,000 Nigerian would be
affected if the threat is carried out, the Chairman of the Nigerian
Community in Gabon, Babatunde Yekini, told the House committee. Mr.
Yekini said that the Gabonese authority complains that large number of
Nigerians has continued to drift into the nation inspite of repeated
representations to the Nigerian government for an intervention.

The Federal Road
Safety Corporation and road transport unions, yesterday, supported a
new law that will guarantee a mandatory compensation of N1m to families
of people who die in road crashes.

According to the
bill under debate by the lawmakers, commuters travelling by commercial
vehicles, who are injured, permanently incapacitated, or get killed
will be entitled to N1million in insurance compensations. The current
package for the three categories of casualties range from N5, 000 to
N50, 000 only, and the amounts are often left unclaimed, according to
lawmakers who spoke at the public hearing for the bill yesterday. The
new rates, when operational, will target the victims of fatal road
crashes in the country. Between 2006 and 2008 for instance, FRSC
figures say 29,000 road accidents resulted in the death of 16,278
persons; with only five states – Ogun, Lagos, Kaduna, Kano and the
Federal Capital Territory – responsible for about 42% of the total.

The criticisms

Insurance experts
however expressed fear that the new figure will lead to a rise in
already hiked transport fares around the country. “The bill is
unnecessary, because its real intent has been taken care of by the
Insurance Act of 2003, motor vehicle and third party Act,” said Talmisi
Usman, who represented the National Insurance Commission of Nigeria at
a public hearing organized by the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

One of the insurance experts, Thomas Olundare, also attacked the
proposed compensation margin as being “too high” and certain to have a
multiplier effect on the cost of goods and services. But the FRSC, the
National Union of Road Transport Workers, the Road Transport Employers
Association of Nigeria, and the Road Accident Prevention Society of
Nigeria, welcomed the provisions of the proposed bill, and hoped it
will help reduce the pains of victims of such crashes. The Corps
Marshal of the FRSC, Osita Chidoka, said the bill was ‘timely.” He,
however, said insurance companies could be made to award separate
claims based on the degree of casualty.

In keeping with its
promise made to teachers, Association of Senior Civil Servants of
Nigeria, and the Ministry of Labour and Productivity, the Federal
Executive Council, yesterday, approved the restoration of the junior
secondary component into the federal unity colleges (FUCs).

The junior school
was scrapped from the unity colleges in 2008. Minister of Information,
Dora Akunyili, told journalists, at the state house in Abuja, that this
approval follows a recommendation made by the committee set up by the
immediate past minister of education to re-introduce the Junior School
component into the FUCs, since it does not contravene the UBEC Act. The
Education Minister, Ruqayyatu Rufa’i, thereafter sought council’s
approval for the restoration of the Junior School component into the
colleges with effect from the academic sessions commencing in September
2011.

“The 104 Federal Unity Colleges were established to promote national
unity, academic excellence and serve as model to states and other
proprietors,” said Mrs Akunyili. “Until 2008, each of the Federal Unity
Colleges had both junior and senior components, but the junior
component was cancelled as a result of wrong interpretation of the NCE
decision of 2005 on the disarticulation policy arising from the
application of the UBEC Act. Since the FUCs were not benefiting from
the UBEC intervention funds, they should have been disarticulated in
the first place. There had been outcries by the members of the public,
parents, other stakeholders, including trade unions, calling on the
federal government to re-consider its decision on the junior component
of the Federal Unity Colleges.” She added that the restoration was
approved because of the need to improve skills and enhance standards
and to answer the yearnings of parents. “The National Council on
Education had already adopted this in their 2009 meeting,” she said.

Five
civil society groups have presented the report of the investigations by
the House of Representatives on the power sector to the Independent
Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offence Commission (ICPC), and to
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), asking them to
“urgently take action on the reports.”

Also presented to
the anti-graft agencies was the report on the non-remittance of
received public revenue into the federation account by ministries,
departments, and agencies between 2003 and 2008.

The reports were
also submitted to the director of operations of the Economic and
Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Salawu Bello, who represented the
agency’s chairperson.

The groups, which
made the presentation in a meeting with the chairman of ICPC, Olayinka
Ayoola, demanded that the people indicted in the power probe report
must be prosecuted forthwith.

The groups quoted
the recommendation made by the report that both the ICPC and EFCC
prosecute former president, Olusegun Obasanjo; the former minister of
power and steel, Liyel Imoke; former minister of state for energy,
Abdulhamid Ahmed; and former minister of power and steel, Olusegun
Agagu.

Other former
government officials the report mentioned for prosecution included the
former managing director of Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN),
Joseph Makoju; the chief executive officer of Transmission Company of
Nigeria (TCN), C. E. Ifesie, and his assistant general manager, G.O.P.
Osakue.

The NIPP’s project
manager, Mike Ezeudenna; the chairperson, technical committee of NIPP,
C. N. O. Nwachukwu; and the managing director of NIPP, J. A. Olotu, and
others were all asked to face the law for the mismanagement of funds.

The House of
Representatives in 2008 mandated its committee on power and steel to
conduct a comprehensive investigation into how huge sums of money was
expended on power generation, transmission, and distribution between
June 1999 and May 2007, without any commensurate result as the nation’s
power generation fell to a meagre 2,500MW.

The last
administration claimed to have expended $16 billion on overhauling the
nation’s power sector via the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP).

The groups added
that the committee submitted its report at the end of the
investigation, in which it revealed that “the sum of $13.28 billion was
expended on the power sector during the period, with further unfunded
commitment of over $12 billion” and nothing has been done on the report
till date.

“Specifically, the
report concluded that looting of the national treasury through the
National Power Project (NPP) and the Power Holding Company of Nigeria
(PHCN) greatly diminished national capacity to provide electric
power…” the groups noted.

Crimes against humanity

They also quoted
the report as saying “what senior officials and politicians did is an
economic crime against humanity, which has caused Nigerians not only
financial loss, but also inestimable mental and physical suffering.”

Some companies on
the indicted list are Rockson Engineering/ Rockson International; Pivot
Engineering; Marubeni West Africa and Marubeni International; Lahmeyer
International; and ABB Powerlines.

The second report
submitted by the groups, alleged that “between 2003 and 2008, about N4
trillion, collected by various ministries, departments and agencies in
the area of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), Pay As You Earn (PAYE),
Withholding Tax (WHT), Value Added Tax (VAT), and Operating Surpluses,
were not remitted into the Federation Account” as dictated by the
constitution.

Reaction to groups’ demand

ICPC chairperson
promised to “urgently work on the reports”, while the EFCC director
noted that he was not sure whether the reports were already submitted
to the agency. He promised to make enquiries and get back to the group.

The civil groups
championing this call includes the Socio-Economic Rights and
Accountability Project (SERAP); Committee for Defence of Human Rights
(CDHR); Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Ikeja Branch; Center for the
Rule of Law (CENTROLAW); and the National Association of Democratic
Lawyers (NADL).

The
senate yesterday opened hearing into the “insolvency” controversy of
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and was presented with a
letter in which the company admitted it has financial difficulties.

In the
correspondence sent to the Federation Account Allocation Committee,
headed by the Minister of State for Finance, Remi Babalola, the NNPC
spoke of the challenges it has faced in meeting its responsibilities
and said it was “insolvent.”

“NNPC is facing
financial difficulties evidenced by amongst others, the inability to
pay for domestic crude as at when due and delays in settling bills for
fuel imports; the financial difficulties essentially stem from
disequillibrium between costs and cash inflow streams; that the
corporation is owed substantial amounts as un-reimbursed subsidy on
petroleum products,” the corporation said in the letter.

“NNPC spends
increasing sums of money in repairing/replacing vandalized assets and
is suffering from products loses arising therefrom; the cost of holding
strategic reserve of petroleum products on behalf of the Federal
Government including demurrage are borne by NNPC.

“NNPC is insolvent
as current liabilities exceeded current assets by N754 billion as of
December 2008 and so; NNPC is incapable of repaying the N450 billion
owed to the Federation Account unless it is reimbursed the N1.156
trillion from the Ministry of Finance,” the letter concluded.

The NNPC Group
Managing Director, Austin Oniwon and Mr. Babalola, yesterday, appeared
before the Senate committee on Petroleum Upstream and Downstream, in
the aftermath of the controversy raised by Mr. Babalola’s comment that
the company is “insolvent”.

Mr. Oniwon said the
memo was to explain the challenges that the cooperation faces which
made it unable to pay up the N450bn it owes the FAAC.

Refusal to pay debt

The corporation’s
boss told Senators that although the NNPC was in a position to pay the
debt, it refused to do so because of the Federal Government in turn
owes it N1.5 trillion.

The amount results
from years of withdrawal effected by past governments who ordered for
funds without receiving National Assembly approvals, the Mr. Oniwon
said.

He said when the
Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) was to be established, the then
President directed the NNPC to release N651 million for the take off
but the money was not refunded.

Also, he said when
a sugar company was to be established, the president (unnamed) again
asked the corporation to release $18 million, which has not been
refunded.

The Senators who expressed shock at such directives, ordered the corporation to present its annual accounts since 1999.

Mr. Babalola denied knowledge of the Federal Government owing the
NNPC N1.5 trillion as, according to him, the Federal Ministry of
Finance has always released funds for the payment of petroleum subsidy.